2023 World Athletics Championships – Men's hammer throw

The men's hammer throw at the 2023 World Athletics Championships was held at the National Athletics Centre in Budapest on 19 and 20 August 2023.

Summary
Ethan Katzberg arrived at these championships with a respectable personal best of 78.73m set earlier in the season. As the fourth thrower in the preliminary rounds, he threw an 81.18m National Record, while no other athlete cleared 78.50 in the preliminaries.

Five time defending champion Paweł Fajdek started off the finals with an exact 80 metre throw. With the home crowd cheering, Bence Halász took the lead with an 80.82m. Katzberg closed off the first round with an 80.18m. In the second round, Olympic Champion Wojciech Nowicki knocked his teammate Fajdek off the podium with an 80.70m. He improved that to 80.83m in the fourth round to knock Halász off the top by a single cm. In the fifth round, Katzberg jumped into the lead with an. On the next throw, Nowicki improved, but 81.02m wasn't enough to get back to the lead. Neither were able to improve in the final round, but Katzberg's 81.11m would have also won the competition.

Through two days of competition, Katzberg landed 6 legal throws, all of them more than a metre longer than he had ever thrown before. He took home a World Championship and set his National Record twice. He became the first athlete from NACAC to win a medal at a Men's Hammer throw in the World Athletics Championships.

Records
Before the competition records were as follows:

The following records were established during the competition:

Qualification standard
The standard to qualify automatically for entry was 78.00.

Schedule
The event schedule, in local time (CEST), was as follows:

Qualification
Qualification: Qualifying Performance 77.00 (Q) or at least 12 best performers (q) advanced to the final.

Final
The final was started on 20 August at 17:52.